Brewing beer in the bedroom
Good evening lovely people! Another week has passed and again, I come to you on Saturday night with too much to say. After a week of hot sun, followed by unbelievable winds, all leading up to a great storm, it is finally raining. I transplanted about 20 huge chamomile seedlings yesterday hoping for rain. Ahhhh, I’ll breathe a sigh of relief. They may not perish after months of bringing them up in trays. There are flowers everywhere (all of which were here before we came), bees buzzing in the garden now relishing over 30 flowering broccoli plants. The wind blew all of my peas off of the fence, but this inspired me to do some spring garden bed preparation. Jess and I spent many hours in the garden this week, did a lot of cooking and a little work on the house with Matt.
Matt worked a few days at the bank, and every day at the nut factory, and of course, as much as he could on the house. The two days he had at home were spent out in the yard, all of us. Here’s a good picture: Matt and Keith are using loud power tools sanding off the wear and tear on lumber which will soon be our rafters. Ten feet away and down the hill, I am staining the sanded rafters on saw horses. Twenty feet down the hill is Jess in her cubby house with the door shut, to keep the chickens out of course. She is dressing, cuddling and feeding her dollies while making cookies and tea for the rest of us. My work is often interrupted, which I quite like, by fun tasks like hanging laundry, Jess’s potty needs, hungry Jess, hungry baby in my belly, Jess wanting to look for eggs, a call for help dressing dollies. This leads to shoddy work on my part and mistakes like kicking over the can of stain, oops. I must excuse myself though, it is difficult to balance a can on a hill while painting downhill. In any case, these are lovely days spent together. I just think about years to come when I’ll be looking at those rafters and remember the beauty of the process.
Speaking of the process, Matt is learning how beer is made. Happy to have received the desired brewer’s kit for Father’s Day, he began brewing that day. We now have a keg in our bedroom which must be kept warm, at 24 degrees Celsius to be exact. It sits in the sun by day, and is wrapped in house wrap and blankets at night. If it falls below 24, the heater warms it up or it is placed by the fire. It bubbles every few minutes, and is interesting to have around. Jess will comment, “beer bubbles!” and for some reason thinks that we will all have a glass when it is finished. Another process I learned about this week was how to make garlic powder. Why bother??? When two pounds of organic garlic starts to go bad, you can not just throw it out. We all played our part: Matt looking up the recipe on the internet, Jess and Keith peeling, me chopping, and Keith and I taking it in turns to check on the garlic for dryness throughout its 12 hour stay in the oven. The most exciting part was throwing it in the food processor to grind up the dried slices and watch it turn into powder, very cool. I was never a big fan of garlic powder, but for the moment, I’m using it in everything. We made applesauce this week and joked about throwing some in. No worries, we didn’t. Jess and I made pesto to use up some of the last fresh cloves. With no basil in the garden, we substituted mint, parsley and oregano and it was great!
With all that talk of food, I just got up for a snack. I’m revisiting my pesto, and I think I overdosed on the garlic. Look out vampires! I wake up almost every night at about 2am for a big snack, this baby is hungry (: I’m showing earlier this time around, 15 weeks now. It’s fun getting bigger but challenging thus far without summer maternity clothes. I’m not relaxing much yet, but I keep trying. There are just too many things that need doing. Jess skipped her nap a few days in a row, so I didn’t even get a midday nap! We have had a few little “yoga” sessions though, we call it yoga but it’s just stretching and pre-natal exercises. For Jess, yoga is running around the room nudie, rolling around on her wool rug “wooly” and copying me every once in a while. I’m amazed at how long she can entertain herself wrapping up in blankets and just lying around on her wooly. She is almost as baby conscious as I am now commenting on what the baby is doing at each point in the day. “Baby’s sleeping in your belly?” “Baby is sitting now?” “Baby’s drinking milk?” “Baby’s eating yogurt!!!” This evening right before bed, lying next to me while listening to Matt play the guitar, she came out of nowhere and said with a big smile, “I have baby brother or sista.” Children seem to say the sweetest things as their last thought before sleep.
Jacinta makes us laugh a lot these days, trying out new words and topics of conversation. Throughout the day if she has heard a new word, she just throws it out there, like, “listen to this!” In the garden I exclaimed that a particular broccoli plant was enormous. She liked the sound of it, and held on to it all day, “Enormous!” We made banana bread whose existence was not for taste but nutrients (wheat germ, honey, nuts, molasses) and she got to pour the sticky molasses. “Molasses!” She liked the sound of it and boldly copied, “molasses.” She brings the word up every few hours, no conversation, just smiles and says it. Another day she commented, “Jacinta Grace Henry…that’s what daddy calls me… Why does daddy call me that?” I answered, “because that’s your full name, just like my full name is Shana Marie Henry.” She accepted that. We have one sweet little hen named Mona Lisa with an injured leg. Any time we come outside she follows closely in hot pursuit, as if she wants a cuddle. Other larger hens frighten Jess by following too close, but not this one. “Mona Lisa is helloing me!” How could you possibly correct this cute grammatical error, to use hello as a verb? Another funny conversation we have concerns “sweaters” and “jumpas,” an American word versus the Aussie word. She knows they mean the same thing, and has learned that mom says sweater and dad says jumper. She has decided that she doesn’t care that only mom says sweater, “I call it sweata, no jumpa.”
It’s almost too warm for sweaters or jumpers here, but Jess likes to wear them. Perhaps it’s more of a problem with detachment. Once the sweater is on, she does not want to part with it, even if it is blazing hot. It could also be that she likes pockets and a few of her sweaters have pockets. We’ll be out in the garden working with dirt and water in the sun and she holds onto that sweater like a security blanket. In addition to weeding garden beds and pulling out winter plants that are overabundant and just in the way, we’ve planted more seeds. Herbs and flowers this week, we planted some really interesting herbs like cumin and anise. Learning from inattentive watering of the past, we have watered the seeds everyday. A few tomato seedlings are popping up. Many of the seeds I’ve planted are new to me. With Jess’s haphazard method of scattering seeds outside of their “labeled zone,” I’m bound to have troubles knowing which plants are which until they produce something. Although I’m already missing Jess’s afternoon nap, we’ve had great long days in the garden with no need to return to the house by lunch. We just pack a picnic and stop and eat in the garden overlooking the dam. There are no dishes and we don’t have to change our clothes and try to get clean, other than our hands of course.
It has been another enjoyable week with two nights out for choir, playgroup, and NO COWS IN MY GARDEN! The fences paid off. Although, the goat ate some strawberry plants, oh well. Jess and I took Matt out to Yarahappini mountain, only 15 minutes away for Father’s Day and we all had a great time. I’m also knitting again, I’ve postponed finishing the socks with thin wool. They were going too slow and winter is over. I’ve started another project for a friend’s baby to come, using fat wool and I love going fast! I received a beautiful skein of silk wool as a gift and this has also reinspired me. The mice are slowing down, but are still present. They eat chocolate!!! I bought some chocolate to send to a friend in Michigan and a mouse ate it! Matt has joined a group working on putting Creation Spirituality into more practical terms so he too is feeling reinspired. He’s studying World Religions for his geography degree but it is quite superficial compared to all of the previous study he has done in his doctoral degree. Jacinta is inspired and inspiring every day, she is even starting to make up her own songs, humming. I’ll catch a little tune and just listen, and being the chatty child she is she’ll stop singing and talk about it, “That’s my song.”
Thanks for sharing our life with us. We’d love to hear all about you too, especially about fall, the smells, the colors and what you’re doing in it all. Ohhhh autumn, this will be my first full autumn away from my country. Enjoy the shortening days, the excuse to go inside and be lazy earlier in the day (: Here’s some Jacinta wisdom for the week: sing a song or hum a tune. Say, “that’s my song,” and either laugh, smile or cry with it.
Matt worked a few days at the bank, and every day at the nut factory, and of course, as much as he could on the house. The two days he had at home were spent out in the yard, all of us. Here’s a good picture: Matt and Keith are using loud power tools sanding off the wear and tear on lumber which will soon be our rafters. Ten feet away and down the hill, I am staining the sanded rafters on saw horses. Twenty feet down the hill is Jess in her cubby house with the door shut, to keep the chickens out of course. She is dressing, cuddling and feeding her dollies while making cookies and tea for the rest of us. My work is often interrupted, which I quite like, by fun tasks like hanging laundry, Jess’s potty needs, hungry Jess, hungry baby in my belly, Jess wanting to look for eggs, a call for help dressing dollies. This leads to shoddy work on my part and mistakes like kicking over the can of stain, oops. I must excuse myself though, it is difficult to balance a can on a hill while painting downhill. In any case, these are lovely days spent together. I just think about years to come when I’ll be looking at those rafters and remember the beauty of the process.
Speaking of the process, Matt is learning how beer is made. Happy to have received the desired brewer’s kit for Father’s Day, he began brewing that day. We now have a keg in our bedroom which must be kept warm, at 24 degrees Celsius to be exact. It sits in the sun by day, and is wrapped in house wrap and blankets at night. If it falls below 24, the heater warms it up or it is placed by the fire. It bubbles every few minutes, and is interesting to have around. Jess will comment, “beer bubbles!” and for some reason thinks that we will all have a glass when it is finished. Another process I learned about this week was how to make garlic powder. Why bother??? When two pounds of organic garlic starts to go bad, you can not just throw it out. We all played our part: Matt looking up the recipe on the internet, Jess and Keith peeling, me chopping, and Keith and I taking it in turns to check on the garlic for dryness throughout its 12 hour stay in the oven. The most exciting part was throwing it in the food processor to grind up the dried slices and watch it turn into powder, very cool. I was never a big fan of garlic powder, but for the moment, I’m using it in everything. We made applesauce this week and joked about throwing some in. No worries, we didn’t. Jess and I made pesto to use up some of the last fresh cloves. With no basil in the garden, we substituted mint, parsley and oregano and it was great!
With all that talk of food, I just got up for a snack. I’m revisiting my pesto, and I think I overdosed on the garlic. Look out vampires! I wake up almost every night at about 2am for a big snack, this baby is hungry (: I’m showing earlier this time around, 15 weeks now. It’s fun getting bigger but challenging thus far without summer maternity clothes. I’m not relaxing much yet, but I keep trying. There are just too many things that need doing. Jess skipped her nap a few days in a row, so I didn’t even get a midday nap! We have had a few little “yoga” sessions though, we call it yoga but it’s just stretching and pre-natal exercises. For Jess, yoga is running around the room nudie, rolling around on her wool rug “wooly” and copying me every once in a while. I’m amazed at how long she can entertain herself wrapping up in blankets and just lying around on her wooly. She is almost as baby conscious as I am now commenting on what the baby is doing at each point in the day. “Baby’s sleeping in your belly?” “Baby is sitting now?” “Baby’s drinking milk?” “Baby’s eating yogurt!!!” This evening right before bed, lying next to me while listening to Matt play the guitar, she came out of nowhere and said with a big smile, “I have baby brother or sista.” Children seem to say the sweetest things as their last thought before sleep.
Jacinta makes us laugh a lot these days, trying out new words and topics of conversation. Throughout the day if she has heard a new word, she just throws it out there, like, “listen to this!” In the garden I exclaimed that a particular broccoli plant was enormous. She liked the sound of it, and held on to it all day, “Enormous!” We made banana bread whose existence was not for taste but nutrients (wheat germ, honey, nuts, molasses) and she got to pour the sticky molasses. “Molasses!” She liked the sound of it and boldly copied, “molasses.” She brings the word up every few hours, no conversation, just smiles and says it. Another day she commented, “Jacinta Grace Henry…that’s what daddy calls me… Why does daddy call me that?” I answered, “because that’s your full name, just like my full name is Shana Marie Henry.” She accepted that. We have one sweet little hen named Mona Lisa with an injured leg. Any time we come outside she follows closely in hot pursuit, as if she wants a cuddle. Other larger hens frighten Jess by following too close, but not this one. “Mona Lisa is helloing me!” How could you possibly correct this cute grammatical error, to use hello as a verb? Another funny conversation we have concerns “sweaters” and “jumpas,” an American word versus the Aussie word. She knows they mean the same thing, and has learned that mom says sweater and dad says jumper. She has decided that she doesn’t care that only mom says sweater, “I call it sweata, no jumpa.”
It’s almost too warm for sweaters or jumpers here, but Jess likes to wear them. Perhaps it’s more of a problem with detachment. Once the sweater is on, she does not want to part with it, even if it is blazing hot. It could also be that she likes pockets and a few of her sweaters have pockets. We’ll be out in the garden working with dirt and water in the sun and she holds onto that sweater like a security blanket. In addition to weeding garden beds and pulling out winter plants that are overabundant and just in the way, we’ve planted more seeds. Herbs and flowers this week, we planted some really interesting herbs like cumin and anise. Learning from inattentive watering of the past, we have watered the seeds everyday. A few tomato seedlings are popping up. Many of the seeds I’ve planted are new to me. With Jess’s haphazard method of scattering seeds outside of their “labeled zone,” I’m bound to have troubles knowing which plants are which until they produce something. Although I’m already missing Jess’s afternoon nap, we’ve had great long days in the garden with no need to return to the house by lunch. We just pack a picnic and stop and eat in the garden overlooking the dam. There are no dishes and we don’t have to change our clothes and try to get clean, other than our hands of course.
It has been another enjoyable week with two nights out for choir, playgroup, and NO COWS IN MY GARDEN! The fences paid off. Although, the goat ate some strawberry plants, oh well. Jess and I took Matt out to Yarahappini mountain, only 15 minutes away for Father’s Day and we all had a great time. I’m also knitting again, I’ve postponed finishing the socks with thin wool. They were going too slow and winter is over. I’ve started another project for a friend’s baby to come, using fat wool and I love going fast! I received a beautiful skein of silk wool as a gift and this has also reinspired me. The mice are slowing down, but are still present. They eat chocolate!!! I bought some chocolate to send to a friend in Michigan and a mouse ate it! Matt has joined a group working on putting Creation Spirituality into more practical terms so he too is feeling reinspired. He’s studying World Religions for his geography degree but it is quite superficial compared to all of the previous study he has done in his doctoral degree. Jacinta is inspired and inspiring every day, she is even starting to make up her own songs, humming. I’ll catch a little tune and just listen, and being the chatty child she is she’ll stop singing and talk about it, “That’s my song.”
Thanks for sharing our life with us. We’d love to hear all about you too, especially about fall, the smells, the colors and what you’re doing in it all. Ohhhh autumn, this will be my first full autumn away from my country. Enjoy the shortening days, the excuse to go inside and be lazy earlier in the day (: Here’s some Jacinta wisdom for the week: sing a song or hum a tune. Say, “that’s my song,” and either laugh, smile or cry with it.
posted by Matt & Shana & Jacinta & Genevieve Henry at
10:11 AM
1 Comments:
Thank YOU for sharing YOUR lives with us so far away. I'm inspired too, and LOVE the pictures intermingled the last two weeks with your wonderful journal. I'm learning about digital scrapbooking and thinking about all the great pages that could be made for your journal stories!
Today was Fall-Kick Off at church, but it was too cold to be comfortably outside. Pizza was served in Knox, though they did have the bouncy thing and the bungy run out there. Fall seems to be coming fast...although that may change tomorrow.
Will write a real message soon.
xoxo
Diane
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